Compensation for Downtime

Oh I see gotcha.

It was a race between gray and bald.

Gray showed up in a V6 Mustang.
Bald showed up in a McLaren F1.

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If I get a free amount of anything, let it be a day of game time, a free month of HBO from my cable provider, a free day of service from my ISP, that is monetary compensation. It's money I'm not spending, and it is money they are spending to provide me that service. It would have been money I would have otherwise spent, so I "got that money back", so to speak. That's how I see it as monetary compensation. I understand what you are trying to say, but I disagree.


Not that I don't agree with Hyperstrike's position, but we are all posting our own opinions on our own accord, thank you very much.

Perhaps we all jumped to that type of conclusion because historically that is the most requested type of compensation that always get's asked for when game outages occur. These people either want their time back (which costs the company money if they hand out free play time to VIP's) or they want money back (which, obviously, costs money). You can't fault anyone on that since that is always what is asked in return. If these people always asked for cakes or pies sent to their home as compensation, then we'd likely be having that conversation instead.

No. I'm pointing out that the entire line of "reasoning" (and I'm being kind) is wrong.

If the world was as simplistic as "We give people free stuff and they like us so much they spend even more", Paragon would be swimming in cash from free outlay.

Unfortunately, reality is a great deal more complex than this and the social interactions are nowhere near as clear-cut.



Oh! This again.

So now, with the talk about "compensation", you're now going to try freighting the goalposts for all you're worth.

Compensation, at its base is all money regardless of if you're talking hard cash, points, etc.

At some point it still costs and the outlay has to be accounted for. Pretending that it doesn't changes nothing.

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Yes, the world is more complex than that. Which is why I've never said that NCSoft would definitely profit from such a move.

You, on the other hand, have been very clear-cut in your position that it would harm them financially.
Where exactly is your complex world there? You seem to think it's actually very simple.

Wow, red herring or what?
I never said that compensation wouldn't cost them, in fact I said the exact opposite (so, please try to learn to read before responding in future).

The fact that it isn't monetary compensation is important because, even though it will still cost them money, it won't cost them, to quote yourself "several thousand MORE in transaction fees".

I never once said that somehow it would magically cost them nothing because it was "just gametime". That's something you made up.

Yes. New point is not new. The only horse deader than this one is the Name Purge horse.


Thread milestone reached!

Coming up next: Ad hominem!

Goat.


=)

Your end of the argument consists of:

• Self-entitled players feel slighted and demand compensation
• Paragon caves in the nebulous name of "good will".
• ????
• PROFIT!

My end of the argument is mathematics and accounting.

The fish was all yours.
Please try to keep your end of the argument straight.

Not that fiddling with someone's bill date won't mess with their in-game rewards.

Not that this, or compensation through points doesn't have to be accounted for...

Nope! Uh uh!

Strawmen unite!

Look at what I said. Why should Paragon eat ANY costs? PERIOD. I simply gave ONE example. Then you ran with it and tried to mutate it into me saying that's what you were arguing.

I'm too tired to deal with this anymore today.

Maybe when you're actually clear on the concept of what you're talking about we can actually discuss this. I have no intention of getting into a further shouting match with someone who is going to attempt to "win" a discussion with such dishonest rhetorical style.

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I really don't know why I ever bother with forums where it isn't the use of fallacies that gets made fun of, but the act of daring to point them out...

You just said that it was a complex issue. And now you're saying it's simple enough to work out quickly with accounting.

How hilarious that your next line is one of telling me to keep my argument straight.

What? That doesn't even make sense.
You're just randomly repeating other people.

There's no should about it.
Why do you keep forcing words into my mouth?

NCSoft are under no obligation to compensate us in any manner. None what so ever. I've said this repeatedly.

My argument has never been that they "should" compensate us, but that it might be good business sense to do so.

And, yes, I "ran" with that example, because that is the example I was disputing at the time.

I've been clear on what I've been saying throughout. You've just be constantly trying to make out that I'm saying something that I'm not.

Go back to my first posts, without the prejudice that anyone who argues in favour of compensation must only be doing so for selfish entitled reasons, and you might be able to understand what I've actually been saying.

Irony.

So, your argument is that it MIGHT be?
umm.... The position you're arguing is "maybe"?

Reminds me of The Neutrals from Futurama, "I have no strong opinion one way or the other."

Between working full time weekdays, ongoing yard work, going to see a band in Boston yesterday, and hiking up to a castle on a mountain today, well, to be honest if there's been any significant downtime recently it's been entirely at times i wasn't playing. i demand hypothetical compensation for all the times i might've not been able to play if i wasn't doing something else.

Actually, the times the servers do go down when i want to be playing just mean i go do something else for a while. i would actually say it's a net benefit for me to have the servers go down at times when i would otherwise be playing. i demand compensation for all the times the servers were up when i should have been doing something more productive!

I don't care about what you were doing. I was just pointing out that you fell into the use of a term that's among a few others that these forums can't help but use several times a thread:

Red Herring
Hyperbole (this one is a good one. Rationalize it how you want, the moment it appears in a threat it spreads like a virus)
Ad Hominem
Disingenuous

Looks like we still got another ten minutes to wait before it'll happen:



Replace Song with Thread. ;-)

Try again. I said ONE of the points I raised is straight-line accounting.


No. I'm simply making a point, whether "compensation" as you call it needs to be documented and accounted for. Whether it happens to be in cash, services, or goods (real or virtual).

English comphrehension please. You have yet to supply a cogent reason why giving something to the users as compensation for downtime makes any real sense from Paragon's POV.

I'm not saying YOU are saying Paragon "should" or "must" do this. Merely that you supply a reason that doesn't take massive quantities of alcohol and mind altering drugs to actually accept.

This question is designed to help you formulate an acceptable answer. Which you have to do.

Yet when I said that "You are not entitled to 720 hours a month of gaming.
YOUR first response was
And I'm saying I fail to see the business case.

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What makes a man turn...Neutral...

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We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

And the other one was what? Mathematics? Because I've yet to see anything that would count as that from you, and I haven't seen any other points other than "It would cost them money!!!!" Which I've repeatedly admitted.

I don't see any point at all in repeating things which have already been accepted as potential problems by both sides.

That's because you refuse to accept that an increase in loyalty could be worthwhile, and yet provide no reason for this beyond ridicule. For example, your next paragraph:

I've have done, your refusal to accept it doesn't mean no-one can.


Did you even bother to read the first word of that post?
It was "no", as in "no, we aren't entitled to anything" as in, I was agreeing with you on that. The rest of my post was offering the suggestion that maybe things would be better if they were different and that shutting down the discussion before it got anywhere was nothing but counter productive.

Yes, it would be the 15,000th time you've said that in one form or another. But you're hardly the only person in the world.

Yes, exactly.
Go back and read my first post, it wasn't in favour of compensation, it was in favour of the discussion being allowed, rather than just being shut down immediately by over zealous NCSoft protectors.

And I think it's been worthwhile, this thread has had at least four different suggestions on ways to compensate, and potential problems for many of them have been brought up too.

If it had just been shut down at the start, we'd have had one suggestion, without even a consideration of its problems.

Well that other MMO was shut down for most of the day and it's currently subscription only. Here the majority of the game's content is available to F2P so that type of compensation is meaningless to some.

In the past Paragon have extended events when unexpected maintenance cropped up during those events. They've also opened up the ski chalet at Pocket D for a few weeks I think as compensation for some issue. This costs them nothing.

Now others have suggested points but that does have some intrinsic real world value since there is no way to acquire them without real money changing hands. Same goes for PR tokens, character transfers, respecs or renames.

Your idea that some kind of compensation would be a positive thing to their bottom line is only valid if you believe that without such compensation their income stream will be harmed or that the compensation would somehow encourage players to spend more money. In the second case maybe if you give a super pack away that you could make an argument that the first "hit" is free and additional income will be made as players become "addicted" to the packs and buy additional points to buy packs. Still all those packs will have to be accounted for as an expense.

Now if your believe in my first case, not giving compensation due to a few hours of unplanned down time would be harmful, then you must believe that this game's players are fed up to the point that unexpected down time is the last straw and only compensation will prevent a mass exodus of paying players.

That's my two inf toward this discussion.

I have had at least 2 free days during my City of Heroes playing time, based around the issues with the European Issue 4 release, not sure if the US had the same problems but the game was almost unplayable due to rubberbanding for several days after that issue.